Sales

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James Buchanan Brady, commonly known as Diamond Jim Brady, was a highly effective salesperson for Manning, Maxwell and Moore, a railroad supply company.[1][2]

Sales are business activities related to selling or the number of goods or services sold in a given targeted time period.

Salesmanship and achievement orientation

See also: Achievement orientation

Harvard Business Review indicates about success in selling: "Eighty-four percent of the top performers tested scored very high in achievement orientation. They are fixated on achieving goals and continuously measure their performance in comparison to their goals."[3]

Salesmanship and emotional intelligence/empathy

See also: Emotional intelligence

As far as emotional intelligence (EQ), according to HR.com: "Hay Group states one study of 44 Fortune 500 companies found that salespeople with high EQ produced twice the revenue of those with average or below average scores. In another study, technical programmers demonstrating the top 10 percent of emotional intelligence competency were developing software three times faster than those with lower competency."[4]

In one company, sales reps that received EQ training outsold the control group by an average of 12%, equating to over $55,000 each.[5]

Empathy is one the most important things for a salesperson to have as it enables him to have rapport with his sales prospects/clients and adopt a problem solving approach to his prospects/customers needs/problems/desires.

Articles on sales and empathy:



The five components of emotional intelligence are: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.[6]

Healthy balance between listening and talking during the sales process

Talking too much is often an issue among rookie salespeople. Despite knowing it can turn off prospects and hinder a sale, even seasoned sales representatives still find themselves doing it. Replacing speaking too much with listening is a must for salespeople to improve and maximize their sales efforts.[7]

Importance of marketing and sales prospecting to sales efforts

See also: Sales prospecting

According to the book Contemporary Marketing Wired, "Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, services, organizations, and events to create and maintain relationships that will satisfy individual and organizational objectives."[8] The four key variables of marketing, which are often referred to as the 4 Ps of marketing, are product, place, promotion, and price.[9]

Marketing and sales have separate primary goals. Marketing is about creating the right product/service offer and raising the awareness of a brand, while sales is about converting a brand's awareness into sales and profits.

Sales prospecting is creating a pipeline of potential customers. Sales professionals who insufficiently sales prospect in terms of the number of people/organizations contacted often severely limit their number of sales. Sales professionals who fail to do an adequate amount of sales prospecting typically aggressively focus on weak prospects with low probabilities of buying their product or service due to not finding enough good prospects (For example, the product/service is not a good fit, lack of interest, lack of a budget, etc.).[10] Effective salespeople qualify sales prospects and contact them on a frequency that is commensurate with their level of interest and their potential fit with their product/service. Contacting a potential future customer too frequently in a given time period risks losing them as a potential future customer due to their annoyance and their increasing perception that the salesperson is pushy and/or desperate.[11]

The article Sales Is Not a Numbers Game — It’s a Prospecting Game indicates:

“ Sales is not a numbers game — it’s a prospecting game.

Everyone is not a prospect

I can tell when a sales professional believes what that other sales instructor says when I ask them a simple question.

When I ask a sales professional to tell me who their ideal customer is, they should be telling me specific descriptions of the types of customers they call on who will most likely buy from them. They may include demographics. Demographics are data about your prospects, and could include company revenue, number of employees, years in business, company location, size of building, or other data.

Their description should also include psychographic data: how people think. You can sell more effectively when you know how your customer thinks and is going to buy. Psychographic data might include whether your customer is a risk-taker or not, whether your customer is health conscious or not, or whether your customer is a status-seeker or not. You can do well selling to risk-averse customers if you're able to communicate and reduce their perception of risk; you'll do worse if you're unable to reduce their perception of risk.[12]

”

Optimistic salespeople have higher sales and company retention rates

See also: Optimism

The Hoffeld Group indicates:

"University of Pennsylvania professor Martin Seligman conducted some interesting research, which was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, on how optimism and pessimism impacts the performance of sales people.
Seligman gave sales people a psychological assessment that measured their level of optimism. Then he evaluated those sales people’s performance over a two year period. The findings were that those sales people who scored high on optimism sold 37% more than their more pessimistic counterparts. What’s more, the sales people who tested in the top tier in optimism had sales production that was 88% higher than those who had scored high in pessimism.
That’s not all. Seligman’s research also revealed that those sales people who had pessimistic mindsets were also 300% more likely to quit the profession of selling than those who were optimistic."[13]

Salespeople and mental toughness

MTQ PLUS, the Mental Toughness Questionnaire, measures an persons's resilience and their ability to deal with pressure and change.[14]

See also: Mental toughness and Psychological resilience

In the workplace, salespeople have high levels of mental toughness compared to other workers.[15]

Sales and rejection related articles

Videos:

How to overcome a fear of social rejection

See also: Social rejection

Overcoming a fear of social rejection:

Salesperson and sales manager incomes in the United States

Sales person

According to the Houston Chonicle, "The 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto principle, states that 20 percent of your company's sales people will generate 80 percent of your sales revenue."[16]

  • Sales Occupation, 2022, U.S Labor of Labor Statistics (Varies in various sectors of the economy and products/services sold)

Sales manager

According to the U.S Labor of Labor Statistics, in the United States in 2022, the average income of sales managers is $130,600 per year with average hourly income of $62.79 per hour. The occupational job outlook is average compared to other occupations.[17]

Harvard Business Review articles on sales

Salespersons

See also

External links

References

  1. ↑ Diamond Jim By Steven Mark Adelson, Irish America, August / September 2010
  2. ↑ M. M. & M., Time magazine. January 24, 1938
  3. ↑ Seven Personality Traits of Top Salespeople, Harvard Business Review, 2011
  4. ↑ The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace: Why It Matters More than Personality., HR.com
  5. ↑ WHY EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN SALES IS THE NEXT HIGH-PERFORMANCE DIFFERENTIATOR
  6. ↑ Domains of Emotional Intelligence, MBA Knowledge Base
  7. ↑ Talking Too Much: Why You Do It & How to Stop
  8. ↑ http://iws.ohiolink.edu/moti/homedefinition.html
  9. ↑ http://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/dstools/paradigm/4pmark.html
  10. ↑ It’s Time to Refocus Your Prospecting, Flannery Sales Systems website
  11. ↑ 10 TIPS FOR FOLLOWING UP WITH CLIENTS (WITHOUT BEING ANNOYING)
  12. ↑ Sales Is Not a Numbers Game — It’s a Prospecting Game, AllBusiness.com
  13. ↑ How Your Thoughts Impact Your Sales, Hoffeld Group
  14. ↑ About MTQ, Mental Toughness Partners website
  15. ↑ Mental Toughness and the effectiveness of Sales People
  16. ↑ The 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance, Houston Chronicle
  17. ↑ Sales Manager, U.S Labor of Labor Statistics]
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